“I cannot authorize what God has prohibited, but neither can I prevent what the Almighty has permitted.” With this message launched in 2022, the king of Morocco launched the second reform of the Mudawana or Family Code, whose first revision marked a modernizing milestone at the beginning of his reign. Mohamed VI had to summon the Government in September of last year to get to work after months of paralysis to update legislation that allows polygamy and tolerates the marriage of girls. As Commander of the Believers, with the powers of a religious leader, the monarch of the Alawite dynasty promoted the creation of a commission made up of jurists, theologians and representatives of the Administration to collect the initiatives of parties, NGOs and civil society in general.
The proposals for the reform of the Mudawana were presented a month ago to Prime Minister Aziz Ajanuch, who immediately forwarded them to the royal palace. Since then its content, considered confidential, has not been made public. The Moroccan press, which has leaked some of the initiatives, interprets this silence as a preview that the king is preparing to carry out arbitration in the face of a regulation that threatens to reopen the gap between the conservative religious and progressive secular sectors of Moroccan society.
“First of all, we must incorporate the principle of equality included in the Constitution and the supremacy of international treaties ratified by Morocco, just as we must adapt the legal text to the changes in society,” veteran feminist Nuzha Skali warns at the outset. , who was an MP for the Party of Progress and Socialism when the Mudawana was first amended. “We are facing a democratic process, since in the end it will be Parliament that approves the legal reform,” highlights this left-wing leader and former Minister of the Family. But the same Constitution, approved in 2011 in the midst of the Arab Spring, consecrates Islam as the State religion, under the “spirit of sharia [ley islámica]”. Skali considers that the sovereign is intervening in the arbitration of the Mudawana review in his dual role as Commander of the Believers and constitutional guarantor of rights and freedoms.
Religious festivities and the monarch’s travels seem to have affected the legislative calendar. Mohamed VI returned to Morocco last week after the private visit to Paris ―where her mother, Laila Latifa, is hospitalized―, which she undertook at the end of the Ramadan celebrations, according to the Moroccan press. The monarch had not traveled to the French capital since September last year, when he had to urgently return to Rabat after the Atlas earthquake, which caused nearly 3,000 deaths. Between December 4, when he made an official visit to the United Arab Emirates, and January 15, he was absent from the Maghreb country on a private trip that took him to the Seychelles islands and Singapore.
While waiting to know the text of the legal project, the division over Mudawana has once again surfaced in Morocco. Feminist Nuzha Skali maintains that those who promote division in society, given the foreseeable recognition of new rights for women, are the political forces that have been most relegated in Parliament. The Islamists of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), who led successive governments between 2011 and 2021, fell three years ago in the last elections from the 125 seats they had in the lower house to just 13. “We are used to hear their voices, which in 2004 accused us of being unfaithful. Then they said that they had called for demonstrations of rejection with a million attendees, but they already scare us,” warns the former left-wing deputy, “Now they do not have the same weight in civil society, where there is a consensus on the need to reform the Family Code.”
Two dozen feminists, intellectuals and journalists have received serious threats through social networks, where they have been described as “enemies of Islam” for having shown themselves in favor of a broad reform of the Mudawana. They have been accused of promoting homosexuality, extramarital affairs and atheism. Among them is the French-Moroccan writer Leila Slimani, co-founder of the Moroccan Outlaws collective. Another association, which represents around thirty feminist and human rights defense organizations, has presented complaints to the Attorney General’s Office to investigate a wave of intimidating messages ranging from death threats to incitement to harassment.
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“There is no legal agenda, no calendar for the approval of the reform, the most likely thing is that it will be approved at the end of the parliamentary session, in the month of July,” says veteran feminist Skali, referring to the month in which Mohamed VI will commemorate the 25th anniversary of his enthronement. “There is no blockade; What counts is the seriousness of a legal change that requires coherence. In 2004 we were perhaps too fast, now we must prevent new legal loopholes from occurring,” she warns.
The apparent leak of part of the content of the reform of the Family Code to the digital information portal Morocco World News, which aims at a simplification of divorce procedures and a clear improvement in the situation of women in inheritances, where they are relegated compared to men, has also angered Islamist groups who see the new regulations as incompatible with the doctrine of Islam. The PJD has described the leak as “distorting”, with content “contradictory to Muslim identity, royal directives and the convictions of the Moroccan people”. The main recognized Islamist party seems to have launched an early electoral campaign with the banner of the opposition to the Mudawana reform after being displaced in the voting intention polls.
Meanwhile, the Justice and Spirituality movement, an unofficially recognized but tolerated force that has been absent from the political board until now, aspires to occupy the space left by the PJD in political Islam in Morocco. Last February, this religious organization with a strong social presence presented a political platform in which it indicated its willingness to participate in the next legislative elections, scheduled for 2026.
The religious reference of ‘Sharia’
A jurist linked to the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH), family law expert lawyer Jadiya Rughany has also dealt with complex criminal proceedings, such as the defense of detainees for their participation in the Rif Hirak, the revolts that shook the north of the country between 2016 and 2017. “The Mudawana reform seems like a bill like any other, but it is a very particular matter, since Islamic law is the main reference of the Family Code,” he points out. “The king, as Commander of the Believers, has the constitutional right to intervene through arbitration. From the beginning he has set the pace of the reform, starting with the procedure,” she details her legal analysis. “It is clear that there is the religious reference of the shariabut there is also another constitutional one, due to the principle of equality, and another international one, due to the treaties that bind Morocco.”
Feminist lawyer Rughany recognizes that the text of the reform proposals is confidential, and that disseminating their content is strictly prohibited. She also admits the existence of “too many controversial points” in the current Family Code. For example, she cites child custody, with discriminatory conditions for women, in the case of divorced women who remarry. She also refers to inheritances for daughters or sisters. Or to the marriage of girls.
“The feminist and human rights defense associations propose a 21st century Family Code, which has the Constitution and international treaties as references; It is not normal that criteria continue to be applied [religiosos] from 14 centuries ago,” he says. He believes that polygamy can hardly be abolished, even if it is a residual phenomenon, when, as he reveals, some of the members of the commission that drafted the proposals have been in favor of maintaining it, even if only in exceptional cases, just as It happens with underage marriage. “The king has to give his opinion before he can turn the propositions into an articulated legislative text,” he concludes.
When exceptions are the rule
Approaching the 20th anniversary of the first major reform of the Family Code in Morocco, parties, unions, associations and experts have appeared in the 130 consultative sessions convened by the commission in charge of reviewing the Mudawana. Current legislation prohibits marriage with minors under 18 years of age, although it allows judges to approve that a girl can marry an adult man. In 2023, 14,197 requests for judicial authorization were submitted in Morocco. In 2022 there were 20,097. More than two-thirds of the applications were accepted, according to data from the Attorney General’s Office.
Feminist organizations also highlight the urgency in reforming succession legislation that contradicts the Constitution and the international conventions to which Morocco has adhered. In the current norm, if there are male siblings, the daughters inherit half as much as they do. If there are none, they are obliged to share the assets with uncles or cousins from the paternal side, who can even deprive them of the family assets.
In the allocation of guardianship and custody of children in the event of marital separation, Moroccan women continue to be discriminated against compared to men, who are also not legally subject to paternity recognition tests in the case of children out of wedlock.
Former Prime Minister Abdelilá Benkirán believes that the Mudawana reform is due to a “foreign conspiracy to turn Moroccans into Europeans.” Benkirán, leader of the PJD, now maintains that the abolition of polygamy is not an “urgent issue” in Morocco.
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